A few seconds after David Hartnett opened the door to his new studio apartment, he broke down.

It was just before Christmas. Hartnett, 40, had been living on the streets for more than 25 years when he was accepted into a program that social-service experts say could end chronic homelessness.

Hartnett has vowed that Housing First, a federal strategy designed to provide housing before arranging social services, will end his homeless days for good.

“When I first walked in, I cried,” he said. “It was just the concept that I can walk into my own house, have something to eat, have a place to lay my head.”

In Phoenix and around the country, groups that serve the homeless have embraced this approach. Experts say this has helped reduce homelessness among the people who are hardest to help: single men and women who have cycled in and out of shelters for years, even decades.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates there are 633,782 homeless people in the U.S and more than 6,000 homeless people in metro Phoenix. About 15 to 20 percent in metro Phoenix are chronically homeless, experts said.

Housing First programs are different because traditionally, chronically homeless people would have to conquer the problems that forced them to live on the streets, such as addiction, childhood trauma or undiagnosed mental illness.

Housing First programs allow them to begin repairing their lives in the safety of their own apartments, while they use support services such as therapy and 12-step programs.

Housing First programs are less expensive than temporary shelters, and they free up space for other needy people, non-profits said.

“This program is the opposite of what’s been done before,” said John Wall of the non-profit Arizona Housing Inc.

Signs of success

Communities have been adopting the Housing First strategy for about a decade, said Matthew Doherty, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

It has become a central element of the federal response to chronic homelessness and homelessness among veterans, Doherty said.

There are early signs the new program is working. Based on data from cities and counties, HUD estimated last year that homelessness among veterans had dropped by 7.2 percent since 2011 and by 17.2 percent since 2009.

The same data showed that chronic homelessness had dropped nationally by 6.8 percent since 2011 and 19.3 percent since 2007.

Using this approach, the federal program estimates that homelessness among veterans and chronic homelessness could end by 2015. Young adults, children and families could be housed by 2020, according to a 2012 report released by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

This fall, Phoenix began earmarking a portion of housing resources for the chronically homeless.

Some social-service professionals feared the newly housed homeless would fail because they might still abuse drugs or ignore their mental problems, said Jodi Liggett, a senior policy adviser for Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. But that has turned out to be less of a concern.

Finding permanent housing for men like Hartnett, who represent the hardest cases, leaves the shelters available for people who are in temporary binds, said Mark Holleran, chief executive officer of Central Arizona Shelter Services, the non-profit that runs the Valley’s largest adult homeless shelter.

“We have tried to position ourselves as the homeless solution,” Holleran said of the new housing program. “That (program) ends homelessness.”

Holleran gestured toward the human-services campus near 12th Avenue and Jefferson Street, which was teeming with people seeking a place to eat and sleep at CASS. “This is not home,” he added.

Affordable housing is a cheaper alternative to emergency shelters, advocates said. Even when the affordable apartment complexes offer 24-hour security and a range of on-site social services, they consume only about two-thirds of the funds needed for emergency shelter services.

The emergency shelter spends about $700 per person each month, said Craig Tribken, a former Phoenix City councilman and spokesperson for CASS. Excluding the cost of acquiring the buildings, CASS spends about $500 per unit per month at the affordable housing complexes. Those services include on-site management, activities, 12-step meetings, computers, an on-site veterans office and employment services.

Hartnett takes advantage of most of those services at his new home in Collins Court Apartments in Phoenix, one of four apartment complexes acquired by Arizona Housing Inc., the housing non-profit affiliated with CASS.

Arizona Housing purchased the property on North 33rd Avenue in 2010. The non-profit gathered $1.3 million in grants and nearly $4 million in federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds to buy the foreclosure property and rehabilitate it. The complex offers “supportive housing” in 80 apartment units for about 200 formerly homeless people.

In Phoenix, Arizona Housing has bought and rehabilitated three apartment complexes. A fourth will open soon and bring the total number of units up to 540. The goal is to have 1,000 units, said Wall, the non-profit’s supportive-housing director.

The housing group was actually helped by the recession, which caused prices for apartment complexes to plummet. That is no longer the case, making the acquisition of new buildings more difficult, Wall said.

At Collins Court, Hartnett pays no direct rent, subsisting on disability and public-housing rental vouchers. But if he does find a job, he will contribute 30 percent of his earnings to housing.

In the meantime, he said, he is seeing a doctor, a therapist and social workers. His work, he said, consists of facing the consequences of years of depression and trauma from a tough childhood and decades of living on the streets, dealing drugs, drinking and contemplating suicide.

“It’s a comfort for me to be able to focus on the issues that have caused me to be homeless instead of being homeless and just trying to survive,” Hartnett said.

If the program continues at its current pace, the chronically homeless will not have to take beds in CASS or fill its men’s overflow shelter parking lot, an area that during the worst of the recession was the sole refuge for hundreds of people needing a place to sleep.

Holleran said that in 2008, this overflow lot served more than 400 men. This year, that number is cut in half, although it has spiked recently.

“I am careful in claiming a huge victory,” Holleran said.

Hartnett said the comforts of his small home will encourage him to keep moving forward and shed his status as a statistic.

“I’ve been shot at, I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been in God knows how many fights, living in parks with other homeless people,” he said.

“There’s no way to get something accomplished and keep your focus when you’re just trying to survive.”

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